


use my memory like a weapon on everything i try

by thefigureinthecorner, WhatsATerrarium



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Branding, Gun Violence, Kidnapping, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Russian Roulette, Shock Collars, Starvation, Suicidal Ideation, Torture, Trans Owen Thompson | Agent Green, Whump, eventual hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:10:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 17,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23408074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefigureinthecorner/pseuds/thefigureinthecorner, https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatsATerrarium/pseuds/WhatsATerrarium
Summary: He goes limp.Feels the hands leave his face.Feels someone toss him over their shoulder.Feels nothing at all.Or: Owen knows a lot about atypicals, and there are people out there who will do anything to get their hands on that knowledge.Canon divergent after episode 51 of tbs; title from Easy Way Out by Gotye.
Relationships: Joan Bright & Ellie Wadsworth, Joan Bright & Mark Bryant, Joan Bright/Owen Thompson | Agent Green, Mark Bryant & Owen Thompson | Agent Green, Owen Thompson | Agent Green & Ellie Wadsworth, Samantha Barnes/Mark Bryant
Comments: 38
Kudos: 36
Collections: BrightGreen Fanfics, Happy Birthday Sam





	1. i'll find out what broke me soon enough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [write_away](https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_away/gifts).



> dedicated to Sam (friend Sam, not Sam Barnes) cause it's her birthday and we love her and she loves angst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Glory" by Radical Face

It’s been… a long Friday.

It’s been a long _week,_ if Owen’s being honest. Or month, or maybe year. Maybe decade.

But today had been especially exhausting.

Owen misses his pockets a few times on his way to reach for his keys, movements clumsy and sluggish. He’d had a night class after work yesterday, and the campus for his psychology class is across town, so he hadn’t gotten back until nearly midnight; he’d had to wake up four hours later to get to work because Ellie’s been trying to match his schedule and it’s imperative that he get there before her; and he’d worked late today, too, trying to get as much done as possible before leaving for the day, trying to stay past the point where Ellie clocked out, trying, trying, trying. The only saving grace is that his class was cancelled this evening. He probably couldn’t have gone even if he tried, as much as he hates to admit it to himself.

It takes as many tries to insert the key into the lock as it did to get them out of his pocket and he almost wants to scream in frustration because he doesn’t have the energy to deal with this right now, but he doesn’t have the energy to really feel frustrated for very long either, and anyway, the lock finally clicks open and he opens the door to his dark apartment.

He drops his briefcase immediately, kicks his loafers off, lets his coat fall in a heap on the floor and drapes his suit jacket and tie over the back of the couch, and flops on his back on that same couch and _finally_ shuts his eyes. Tomorrow is Saturday; who cares what he looks like in the morning? He’s got the day off tomorrow. So instead of eating dinner, or getting in his pajamas, or brushing his teeth, or carrying himself all the way to the bedroom, or doing any of the things he would normally do before bed, he lets himself doze off on the couch.

For what feels like about two seconds.

He’s startled awake almost immediately by hands covering his mouth and nose and the adrenaline rush takes over any residual tiredness he might’ve been feeling, panic flooding his veins instead.

There’s someone in his apartment.

There’s someone _in his apartment grabbing him._

He tries to yell around the hand-- his building doesn’t have the thinnest walls but his neighbors would probably be able to hear him screaming-- but the hand muffles the sound too much and makes it hard to breathe. Nobody’s going to hear him. He tries to pry the hand away, tries to kick back and throw the guy off, tries to do _anything,_ but the person grabbing him is stronger than him and has better leverage and there’s nothing he can do.

And it doesn’t matter anyway.

He feels a prick in his neck.

“There. That’ll make you stop fucking squirming.”

Nothing happens, for a second, and he thrashes harder, one last-ditch effort to try to break loose, but then the living room _tilts_ and his limbs stop obeying him and his vision fades from the muted nighttime window-light of the living room to absolute darkness.

He goes limp.

Feels the hands leave his face.

Feels someone toss him over their shoulder.

Feels nothing at all.


	2. as the tide receded into the unknown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Northern Lights" by Death Cab For Cutie

The ringing of Joan’s phone startles her as she jerks her head upwards from her somewhat hunched position over her laptop. She takes a moment to calm herself, adjusting to the presence of the sound in the room. Why on earth is her ringtone that loud?   
  
She steps away from her laptop, which at the moment is displaying some of the data from the flashdrive Sam had given her. She’d been obsessively reading, rereading, organizing, and making notes on everything in it since Sam’s birthday. If it were up to her, she’d be poring over these files in her office, but her fixation has gotten to the point where Mark has begun prohibiting her from ‘working too much’. Though if you ask her, she’s working a completely reasonable amount for someone with the responsibilities she has, thank you very much.

Although, Mark had left for Sam’s just around a half hour ago to watch a movie and most likely stay the night, so while she’s now too settled in to head out to her office, at least she doesn’t have to wait for the short periods where he’s busy in the other room to get work done without being lectured.

But of course, her research is likely about to be interrupted by some ridiculous conflict or another. The ones sparking unnecessary conflict and  _ stress _ seem to be the only phone calls she gets these days. Then again, even those aren’t too frequently occuring at six in the evening on Sundays. When she grabs her phone from the coffee table she’d left it on, she frowns at the number on her screen. It’s not a local one, and it’s definitely not one she has saved or recognizes.

But still, it can’t hurt much but take a few seconds of her time to answer, so she raises the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Joan?” answers a voice that sounds familiar.

“Yes?”

“This is Owen’s mother.” Huh. She wasn’t expecting that. She was about to be concerned that Owen really dragged his parents into this thing. But she knows for certain he wouldn’t involve  _ his _ family. Just hers. “I’m sorry, I hope I’m not bothering you, but… have you heard from Owen at all recently?”

“Um, no, I haven’t, not in weeks. Why?” She furrows her brow as her mind begins to race a little.

“He was supposed to call earlier today. He never misses a call. We’re just… we’re worried about him.”   
  
“I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I don’t know where he is. Um… I hope he calls you back soon,” she adds awkwardly. What are you supposed to say when your ex boyfriend’s mom contacts you to let you know he’s not calling?

“Thank you, dear,” she responds sweetly, but Joan can hear the worry in her voice. “Have a good evening.”   
  
“You too.” Joan waits a second before hanging up the phone and letting her hand fall to her side. She sighs and walks back over to her laptop, hesitating before closing it. She’s inexplicably not in much of a mood to work anymore. Something about that conversation has her feeling a bit off.

The next couple days go by and Joan tries to ignore that phone call, but it lingers in the back of her mind regardless. In all the three years she’d dated Owen he  _ never  _ missed that phone call, not even once. So despite herself, despite all she’s told herself she doesn’t give a flying fuck about him anymore, she  _ is  _ worried about him.

That worry is only momentarily pushed aside by a flare of annoyance when she sees Wadsworth’s name come up on her phone.

The existence of caller ID is the one thing in life that prevents Joan from dismissing the concept of a god altogether.  _ Someone _ must be watching out for her if she’s able to know her sworn enemy is the one calling her before she even picks up the phone. She lets the phone ring out and go to voicemail and turns back to her filing cabinet.

Wadsworth calls four more times before Joan finally gives in and picks up the phone.

“Look, Ellie--”   
  
“Owen’s gone missing.”

The tone of Wadsworth’s voice is what makes Joan pause in the annoyed tirade she was about to launch into before hanging up. She doesn’t sound authoritative, not as much as she usually does, at any rate. She sounds... concerned? There’s some undertone of worry beneath the usual collected facade.

And-- the phone call. On Sunday.

“Still?” The word slips out and she wants to kick herself.

“Yes-- wait, what do you mean  _ still?  _ Joan, did you know about this?”

Joan takes a deep breath before she answers. She can’t pull back on this one. “I… sort of did. His parents called me-- I guess they still had my number somehow. He usually calls them every Sunday but he missed that call. They were worried.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“The truth. That I didn’t know where he was, and he hasn’t contacted me at all in weeks.”

“Hm. If you say so.”

“Oh, please, how would I know where he is any better than you do?”

And then it hits her-- that conversation last Monday in her office, Wadsworth talking about self-doubt and how she’s been running the AM and how Owen…

How Owen’s been trying to take that away from her, as Wadsworth had put it.

“...How do I know this wasn’t your doing in the first place?”

_ “What?” _

She’s thrown Wadsworth for a loop and she can’t help the small amount of satisfaction that rises in her when she hears Wadsworth’s confusion. Catching  _ Wadsworth _ off-guard is no small feat.

“Last week. You came into my office, talking about how nobody can run the AM like you, how Owen had been trying to oust you or whatever the hell you think he’s doing. How do I know you’re not just trying to cover up the fact that you took him and put him on tier 5?”

“Joan, please, you’re being ridiculous--”

“Oh,  _ am I?  _ Because I think that sounds  _ exactly  _ like something you would do if you thought he was threatening your authority--”

“I’ll have you know, I  _ do _ actually care about him.”   
  
“And I don’t?”

“No love lost, remember?” Her tone is calm and smug with that reminder. For someone so fond of saying things like ‘don’t make me the bad guy’, she sure loves to do it to everyone else.

“Yes, well, even if you _claim_ to actually care about him, you said that about me once, and yet my brother still ended up locked up in a basement for five years, so forgive me if I’m not exactly keen on _trusting_ you.”

“Look, Joan, you can suspect me all you want here, but the fact of the matter is this isn’t my doing and I am genuinely concerned about him. If what you’re saying is true--”

“It is.”

“--Owen’s been missing since Sunday. He hasn’t come into work the past few days, which I know you know is odd behavior on its own but especially odd considering he’s been coming into work early for the past month. I’m going to his apartment after work to see if I can find out what happened. You can choose to come with me or not, that’s your prerogative, but I  _ will  _ be there.”

And goddammit, this is definitely bait. Wadsworth knows Joan doesn’t trust her on her own.

It’s working, though. If this is Wadsworth’s doing, this is just more time for her to cover up whatever happened, make it look like someone else’s doing.

“Fine. I’ll be there.”

She can practically see the victorious grin on Wadsworth’s face as she says it.

“Wonderful. See you there at 5, then.”


	3. maybe your own devices will keep you afraid and cold

Owen becomes aware of three things all at once:

One, his head  _ hurts;  _ two, he’s strapped to a table, bound by his wrists and ankles; and three, someone he has never seen before is standing over him with a twisted smile.

“Who--” His voice is hoarse and he realizes how dry his throat and mouth are when he tries to speak and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. He clears his throat. Tries again. “Where am I?”

His question is not answered; instead the figure standing over him steps closer and reaches down, his hands nearing Owen’s neck.

“Wh-what are you-” he asks as he feels something being clasped tightly around his throat.

“Glad you asked,” the man in front of him almost grins, clearly more than happy to answer  _ that _ question, which unnerves Owen a little. He pulls a remote control out of his pocket and presses down on a button. Owen doesn’t have time to brace himself before the pain rips through his body. Starting in his neck and spreading in an instant to the rest of him, making him feel as though every single nerve in his body is on fire. And the second the pain ripples through him, so does the mangled and horrified scream. He’s still screaming when the pain stops, though it takes a second to realize it, and then a few more seconds for the cries to dissipate into ragged, panting breaths.

“That’s what’s going to happen if you don’t cooperate. Got it?”

Still shaking with fear and pain, Owen nods quickly. Tears he doesn’t remember crying are already dripping down his face. His heart skips several beats as he scans the room around him. His mind and body are both still reeling from the shock, and so while he can observe his surroundings— dark room, musty air, stone walls— he can’t properly process any of it.

“Good. Now, what we want is information. You know about atypicals; we’ve been watching you, we know where you work. We were  _ very  _ interested in your boss, but, well, you’re the easier target. She’s got too many people in her life; you’ve got a while before anyone notices you’re missing.”

The accuracy of that statement stings. It had been Friday evening-- his parents might notice on Sunday, but other than that…

Ellie might notice if he misses work for no reason. But lord knows how long it’ll take her to  _ care  _ that he’s gone. She’ll probably see it as an advantage.

And this room has no windows. No clocks. No indication of what time it is at all; no indication of how long he’s been out. He’s pretty sure he’s only been awake for all of five minutes but it’s already felt like five hours. At this rate he won’t be found for a century.

Some of that resignation must show on his face, because the man laughs. “Aw, don’t worry, this’ll all be relatively painless for you if you just cooperate with us. It’s a simple request: just tell us what you know about atypicals. What abilities are out there, who has those abilities, where can we find them. Stuff like that. Real simple.”

And that just raises so many alarm bells. Because while Owen rarely feels like the brightest bulb in the box, especially in the company he keeps, it doesn’t take a detective to deduce that this man-- and his group, judging by the use of “us”-- cannot be trusted. They don’t have good intentions. They do, actively, want to hurt atypicals; there isn’t even a  _ guise _ of trying to help. They’re underground. They do what they want. No guidelines, no restrictions, just plain and simple torture.

He meets the man’s eyes fully for the first time since waking up. Steels his gaze. Hopes his resolve manages to break through the abject terror.

It must work, because the man shrugs.

“Eh, suit yourself then.”

The pain begins again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry owen
> 
> chapter title from growing old is getting old by silversun pickups


	4. trying to put it back together (as i watch it fall apart)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Nothing Makes Sense Anymore" by Mike Shinoda

Joan isn’t entirely sure why she’d held onto her key to Owen’s apartment. Part dislike for throwing things away, part never having gotten around to it, and part liking the knowledge that should it come down to it, she could stage a high stakes heist for whatever files and information Owen keeps at home. Of course, that’s assuming he hasn’t changed the lock since they broke up. 

She knocks on the door, and is preparing herself to call out his name until she hears footsteps. The door swings open, and standing in front of her is….  _ oh you’ve got to be kidding. _

“You’re early,” Wadsworth remarks, seeming to have no opinion either way, which if anything, Joan finds more suspicious than if she would have been upset. Ellie  _ hates _ when other people are early.

She opens the door further to let Joan in, and Joan freezes because that’s when she notices Ellie’s face. She looks  _ worried _ . Her skin is ashen and her eyes are flickering with fear and what almost looks like shock.

If Joan weren’t so put off by that, she’d take time to appreciate the miracle that is Ellie Wadsworth being caught off her guard twice in a day. She doesn’t, though. She’s busy trying to disguise the dread that falls over her at that second. “What’s… what’s wrong?” she asks carefully. Her actions, however, are in direct conflict with her tone, as she’s already pushing her way inside. She doesn’t care if this is a trick— though if it is, Wadsworth’s really been honing her acting skills— she needs to see what’s in that apartment.

She stops in her tracks as soon as she sees the couch. One of its cushions has been strewn onto the floor beside it and the lamp next to it has been knocked over.

“The door was unlocked,” she hears Wadsworth say quietly from behind her.

She takes a few steps closer to get a better look, almost afraid of what she’ll see, and— she was right to be, because most concerning of the things she’s seen are the spots of blood on the pillow.

She takes a moment. She takes a breath.

“When was the last time you saw him?” she asks, trying to maintain some sense of calm in her voice.

“Friday night,” Ellie responds. “And from the looks of it, that’s when…” she clears her throat. “His suit jacket and tie are on the floor and so is his briefcase. It looks like he just got home from work.

“Right,” Joan says, trying to recap. “So he got home from work on Friday. Someone got into his apartment and…” her voice gets a bit shakier and she squeezes her eyes shut, trying to remind herself to stay calm. “....Did something to draw blood at some point. It- it looks like he put up a fight, but he’s not here, so…”

“...So they took him,” Wadsworth agrees. And for a minute, neither of them say anything.

Wadsworth breaks the silence. “Who do you think would…”

“I don’t know. If either one of us knows, it would-“

“Are you really going to accuse me again?” Ellie snaps.

“No,” Joan states firmly. “I’m just saying, you would know better than I do who would have reason to…”

They both trail off, because neither knows how the sentence ends. Neither knows what happened to Owen, if it’s still happening, or if anything  _ can  _ happen to Owen anymore.

Joan feels something wet trailing down her face.  _ No. She’s not crying. _

Wadsworth looks her over briefly, and Joan meets her eyes, the fearful look they had minutes ago is gone, now it’s something new. Ellie’s eyes are clouded with a deep exhaustion that Joan, adrenaline spiking, almost envies.

“Why don’t you go home? I can have some of my best agents here within a few minutes and I’ll… obviously I’ll update you if we find anything else, but-“

“I’m fine, Ellie.” She tries to appear a bit more in control, assertively making eye contact as she tries to wipe the tears from her face as casually as possible.

“Joan. Go home.”

Joan doesn’t go home. Sam’s house is closer and she knows that that’s where Mark will be. While it’s likely not safe driving practice, she tries to get all of the tears out of her system on the way, both in order to save herself a little dignity and so as not to worry Sam and Mark.

But when Sam answers the door, Joan is just short of sobbing. “Joan? What’s- Oh my God, what’s wrong?” she can hear the panic in her friend’s voice as, as though on instinct, Sam steps forward and hugs her. So much for not worrying her.

She lets Sam lead her inside and she can hear Mark calling out from the other room. “Who’s here?” His footsteps come closer and she almost starts to panic more. She doesn’t want Mark to see her like this. “Holy shit, Joanie-”   
  
“Let’s go sit down,” Sam interrupts, one of her arms still wrapped tightly around Joan as the three make their way to the living room. She can feel Sam and Mark’s eyes glued to her and she  _ knows _ they’re worried about her. She’s not the one people should be worried about.

She can’t distract herself from the thought that every second that she wastes  _ crying _ is another second that Owen is missing, that terrible things could be happening to him. She hates that feeling. She has enough experience with it to know she does.

She sits down, sandwiched between Sam and Mark on the couch. They watch her expectantly as she tries to steady her breathing and stop herself from breaking out into full on sobs.

She takes a deep breath.

She takes another.

She calms down.

And once she does, Mark asks her quietly. “...What happened?”

“Owen…” she exhales, and despite knowing she doesn’t need to, she clarifies. “Agent Green… he… he’s missing.”   
  
“What?” Sam responds with mild alarm. “What do you mean? How.. How do you know?”

Mark doesn’t say anything. Joan is almost glad, because a part of her isn’t certain she’d be able to handle what he might have to say. The irony of this situation isn’t lost on her.

She feels the anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach double. She knows she won’t be able to stop herself from crying when she walks them back through everything. But with her hands shaking and her voice wavering, she does anyways. Sure enough, by the end of it, she can barely force the words out. “...and there was… there was blood… in his apartment.” She’s clutching Sam’s hand and she’s leaning into Mark and she’s  _ shaking _ and she’s  _ sobbing  _ and none of those things are  _ useful _ .

The part of her that helps patients every day and that studied psychology for  _ ten fucking years _ knows that the way she’s thinking isn’t healthy, but she long ago realized that as much as she tries, she can never get that part of her brain to direct its wisdom to her.

She continues to spiral, trying to let the comfort the other two are attempting to provide her be enough to calm her down, but once she starts breaking, she knows she has to ride it out. Why can’t the universe be done  _ fucking _ with her already? Hasn’t the soap opera that their lives have become gone on long enough?

“Everything’s going to be okay,” she hears Sam reassure her. But right now, she really can’t even focus on how things are going to  _ be _ only how they  _ are _ . And how they are is terrifying, and uncertain, and painful, and not okay.

Nothing is okay.


	5. and wait for dawn, but there's no light

Owen is given two small mercies.

The first is that he isn’t kept tied down; he can stand up while his captors are gone and move around the room freely, which means he can examine the space he’s about to be kept in indefinitely. It’s a basement, from the looks of things-- there are wood stairs leading up, though he assumes the door at the top is tightly locked and he’s far too scared to check on account of the shock collar still firmly clasped around his neck, occasionally rubbing against the burned, tender skin there as a painful reminder of things yet to come. The basement is unfurnished, save for the table he’d been strapped to earlier. There’s a wood door in the wall furthest from him.

The second, which he discovers as he tries to open said door and investigates further, is that this basement has a bathroom, though he supposes that’s more for his captors’ benefit than his own, given they’d be the ones to deal with the consequences of  _ not _ giving him one. The bathroom is as musty and windowless as the rest of the basement and is by no means anything fancy; it contains no bath or shower or mirror, only a toilet and sink with one roll of toilet paper. But it exists.

Small victories are better than none at all, Owen supposes.

He turns on the faucet at the small sink, washes the dried tears off his face with the freezing cold water, cups his hands and takes a few sips in a feeble attempt to soothe the raw scratchiness in his throat, and tries to take stock of the situation now that he’s got a moment to himself.

Self-inventory comes first. He’s still wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing when he fell asleep Friday night-- tan slacks, white button-down, white undershirt. His belt is missing; his shoes and socks, too. He figures they’re taking no chances with items he might use as weapons. He pats down the pockets and finds his phone and wallet have been taken as well, or maybe they fell out of his pockets in the struggle, or maybe he’d taken them out before going to sleep after all. His memories of the capture are muddled by exhaustion and panic; he doesn’t know quite what to believe.

Which brings him to the next point-- he is still very much exhausted. He’d slept for a few minutes, but the sedation afterwards didn’t count as sleep, and between that and the pain, his muscles and his eyelids are starting to feel heavier and heavier as the adrenaline wears off.

With the situation being what it is, he’s not entirely certain he  _ should  _ sleep; some part of him feels like he should be prepared, some part of him feels like he should allow himself some waking hours where he isn’t being tortured, some part of him feels like he should take this time to think of a way out.

And yet, with the situation being what it is, he feels like the only thing he  _ can  _ do is sleep. Give his body time to recover. Give his  _ mind  _ time to recover. Make certain he’ll be well-rested enough to handle what’s to come.

This room is barren. There’s nothing here to do but sit and wait. He’s certain the anticipation and anxiety will eat him alive if he just sits around thinking about what they might do to him to get the information they want.

So he finds a relatively tidy corner of the room to sit in, rests his back and his head against the stone wall, tries to ignore the sting as he moves his neck, and closes his eyes. He has no illusions that it will be a comfortable or restful sleep, but the darkness welcomes him almost immediately.

He dreams, and his dreams provide no escape.

He dreams of unkind eyes and malicious smiles and of pain. He dreams of struggling. He dreams of fighting back. He dreams of feeling like his limbs are no longer his own, of trying to push back against the sedation to save himself.

He wakes up to pain. He wakes up screaming.

It takes his brain time to catch up with what’s happening. The collar’s on again, sending the pain rippling through his body again, and he’s tipped over onto his side to curl against it, and--

\--and the pain ends as suddenly as it started and he gasps like a fish out of water as he tries to regain his bearings.

There’s nobody in the room; it remains just as empty as it had been when he fell asleep. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Over an hour, if he’d been dreaming, but there’s no indication beyond that.

He’s tense now. He pushes himself up off the floor, waits for someone to walk down the stairs. But minutes go by, and there’s nobody.

He lets himself try to sleep again.

The same thing happens.

He dreams. He hurts. He wakes up screaming.

The second time, there’s still nobody. The second time, he understands what they’re doing.

It’s periodic. He doesn’t get to rest. He isn’t being given the chance to sleep, not for much longer than an hour at a time.

But  _ knowing _ this doesn’t make the exhaustion stop dragging him down. The moment the panic leaves, his eyes are forcing themselves shut again, and the cycle continues and continues and continues until it doesn’t anymore and there’s a new man standing over him, one he doesn’t recognize. Smaller in stature than the last man. Same cruel glint in his eyes.

“Hope you had a nice rest,” he says, and Owen can tell from the remote in the man’s hand that he knows that Owen did not, in fact, have a nice rest at all.

But Owen doesn’t say anything, despite the uncharacteristic snark he can feel dancing behind his tongue. He knows what will happen if he does; he knows what will happen if he doesn’t. He can only hope the punishment for civilly disobeying them is less cruel than the punishment for outright revolting against these people.

The room has a chair now. The man grabs his arm roughly and drags him over, and Owen doesn’t fight it, doesn’t want to risk the consequences of trying to fight. He prides himself on not trembling as he’s tied to the chair, first his hands bound behind the hard wooden back and then his ankles to the legs. He prides himself on very little else.

Because Owen has never been a brave man. He may have tried to be, standing up against Ellie in the past week; he may have been working the courage up to finally, finally stand up against her, to finally act on the sense of wrongness that’s been building since Joan found Mark in the AM’s basement. And so while his hands stay steady as the scratchy, fraying rope painfully cuts into his wrists, he feels his blood run cold when the man speaks again.

“Today is when the real fun begins.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ..................sorry owen
> 
> chapter title is from the same song as ch. 4, nothing makes sense anymore by mike shinoda


	6. the beast that you're after will eat you alive (and spit out your bones)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Eat You Alive" by The Oh Hellos

Mark watches Joan break down over Owen’s kidnapping and feels his emotions shift a little to the left.

He’s not really sure how else to describe the feeling, anyway. Because really, how  _ do  _ you describe the feeling of your sister crying over the kidnapping of the man who aided in your own kidnapping?

It’s impossible, Mark decides, and so he stops trying to identify the emotions and starts to wonder if Joan had felt like this when  _ he’d  _ gone missing. If, in a flipped version of today’s script, she’d broken down crying on Owen’s couch, wondering where her brother was, wondering why she couldn’t find him at home or reach his phone number or see him face-to-face. He wonders if she’d cared the same amount as she does now. He wondered if she’d cared more.

He wondered, briefly, if she hadn’t. If she cares more now than she did back then.

Logically, of course she cared. Logically, he  _ knows _ she cared.

The small part of his brain pushing up memories of her face on the other side of the glass door in tier 5, however, claims otherwise.

“Mark?”

“Huh?”

It’s Sam. She’s reached an arm past Joan, her hand on his knee now.

Huh. He tuned out the whole conversation.

Joan is nearly shaking as her sobs quiet down and the look on her face is something so broken and so afraid that it jars him, makes him lose whatever remaining sense of direction that his train of thought had.

Following Sam’s gaze, Joan turns to look at him. “Mark, are you—“ The words are almost a reflex because as she’s only halfway through them, she interrupts the automatic response. “I’m— I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be— this is—” she sniffles. “This is probably weird for—”

As she stammers out what he’s sure she thinks is some sort of apology or reassurance for  _ whatever  _ the hell he’s feeling, her expression begins to gradually shift into the more analytical, reserved one she uses to distance herself.

Isn’t it funny that the same woman who spends every waking minute burdened by other people’s problems uses it as an escape mechanism? The second she sees someone else struggling, she jumps in to fix it. To fix  _ him _ in order to make herself feel a little bit less broken.

He wants to be sick of it. Because he hates that she acts like she can solve all his problems, he hates that she thinks that she can fix him. But there’s a small yet overwhelming part of him that revels a little in having his feelings acknowledged. That soaks up her attempts at comfort and reparation the way one would bask in the sunlight after years underground.

But all that aside…

He takes a deep breath.

Ignores the way it trembles a bit on the exhale.

“I… yeah. Yeah, I mean, obviously it’s a little weird, but you don’t… Joanie, you shouldn’t have to shove down your own feelings for me right now— and don’t say you’re not doing that, I don’t need Caleb around to know you are,” he says, interrupting her before she can protest. “You can feel however you feel about this, even if I don’t know how I feel quite yet.”

Joan stares at him, and he can practically see the wheels turning in her brain as she tries to think of a good response— she’s working her jaw like she’s about to open it, but no words come out, and finally, she just nods.

“So… what’s the plan, exactly?” Sam chimes in after a moment’s silence. “I’m assuming you’re not just going to sit around and wait for the AM to find him.”

Joan’s jaw tenses again. “No. No, I don’t think I can. I don’t trust Ellie as far as I can throw her— she seemed concerned about Owen when we were at his apartment but I know her. She’s a very good actor. And she— when she stopped by my office last week she was going on about how Owen was trying to get in her way, oust her as director, all sorts of stuff. I don’t know whether or not I actually think she’s behind this, but, well. I wouldn’t exactly put it past her.”

Mark hums at that. Because, really isn’t that just like Wadsworth? Capturing the people who she sees as a threat to her so that they can Never stand in her way again?

He’s certainly been on the receiving end of that treatment.

“I mean… yeah, that tracks.” He shrugs. “That sounds like her.”

“And I’m assuming you want us to help you find him.” Sam doesn’t phrase it like a question; she already knows the answer. 

“...Ideally, yes,” she says, and then backpedals. “You— you don’t have to— I know it’s asking a lot—“

“We’ll help.” Mark registers the surprise on the faces of the other two just as he registers the words that just came out of his mouth; he’s almost just as surprised by his own certainty, but, he realizes, he honestly does mean it.

“Mark, you—“

“Look, I still hate the dude, but whatever happened to him, I can’t imagine it’s anything good. If he’s going through anything—  _ anything—  _ like the shit that I went through at the AM, then… I’ll help. Nobody deserves that. Not even him.” He raises an eyebrow at both of them as though expecting a challenge.

None is given.

“Okay,” Sam says instead. “I guess we’re doing this.”

“We’re doing this,” Joan agrees.

Mark’s mind is racing, wondering if he’s making a mistake, but— no. No, he’s sticking with it.

He claps his hands down twice on his legs, making the resolution.

“Alright then. So. Where do we start?”


	7. i'm a soldier (and i'm on my feet for now)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Tread On Me" by Matt Maeson, but the working title for this chapter was "Goose Piñata".

‘Fun’ is an odd way of saying ‘cruel and painful torture’, and in this case ‘cruel and painful torture’ is really just an elaborate way of saying ‘beating Owen senseless with a wooden baseball bat’. Although, now that he’s thinking about it, his captors most likely aren’t thinking of it that way. They’re thinking of it just as they’d described it: fun.

He winces in preparation for the incoming blow as one of the men prepares to strike. This blow comes crashing painfully into his shoulder, causing him to let out a cry.

“Aw, come on,” one of the men grins sardonically down at him. “Just tell us something useful and you’ll be fine.”

What do they want to know? They want to know about atypicals, but he has no way of knowing what knowledge they already have and what knowledge they’ll deem  _ useful _ . Other than, of course, ‘ _ who has those abilities _ ’, and that information is something he can’t give them. They want information about the different known abilities? That has to mean abilities like Damien’s, like Sam’s, like Rose’s, like  _ Mark _ ’s. And if he tells them about those abilities, it’s only a matter of time before they start trying to force the identities of the people he cares about out of him.

Who knows what will happen if they find out about any of them? They’ll likely be kidnapped just like he had been. They’d be tortured and put through experiments ten times worse than anything The AM had ever done (which he’ll admit probably isn’t easy to beat). He can’t let that happen to anyone else, let alone any of his patients, or Sam, or Mark.

Owen says nothing and the man with the bat paces around him for a second. He seems to stop moving when he’s standing behind the chair and Owen feels his heartbeat speeding up.

“Not gonna talk?”   
  
He doesn’t respond. Instead, he braces himself for the blow he knows is coming. It hits him on the back of his shoulders with such a force that for a second he’s scared that the chair is about to fall forward. He’s grateful that it doesn’t, though mostly he’s grateful that they hit him on the back and not on the head.

However, as grateful as he may be for those two small miracles, he’s still crying out. The pain manages to outweigh the relief. Especially since he is incredibly aware that they’re very likely saving the worst for later. And that thought chills him to the bone, because he’s sure he doesn’t want to know what all they’re saving.

The man continues pacing around him, stopping very shortly when he reaches a point next to Owen. Owen barely has time to think, let alone offer up information before he’s struck again, this time directly in the gut. It knocks the wind clean out of him and he can barely even cry out as he tries, wheezing and panting, to catch a breath. The two other men in the basement seemingly decide to give him a minute this time. Whether it’s to allow him to catch his breath or to allow  _ them _ to step back and laugh at the sight, he’s not entirely sure (though he’s inclined to believe the latter).

By the time he can breathe normally again, he feels somehow more exhausted than he’s felt since he arrived. They’re done laughing now, simply standing in front of him, smiling gleefully with their arms folded over their chests. They’re looking down at him grinning and laughing to each other like he’s some sort of game that they’re playing for fun rather than a real, human person who they’re  _ hurting _ .

He doesn’t know quite how to describe how intensely helpless and  _ dehumanized _ the sight makes him feel.

The man with the bat lets out one faint final chuckle before his face goes back to being menacing, and Owen can tell he’s not laughing at what had happened anymore, he’s laughing at the thought of all the bad things to come. All of the hell that they’re saving to unleash on him at just the right time.

That’s when it occurs to him that if they’re saving up, he probably should be too. There’s only so much information that he has, and only so much of that information that he can allow them, some of it being a lot more valuable than the rest. He doesn’t know how much they want from him, or how long they’re going to keep him here, or how drastically their methods will escalate.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him. What he  _ does _ know is that he’s not telling them anything yet.

He’s not quick to believe that anyone is going to be looking for him, or that anyone who might be looking would even know where to look. He’s also not putting any money on these people letting him go— not any time soon, at least.

He sits up a bit straighter, takes a deep breath, and squeezes his eyes shut as the man swings the bat back again.

He remains silent.

He’s got a lot of time to bide.

——

The day ends with Owen feeling breathless, sore, and impossibly tired.

But more than anything, as the nausea of being repeatedly hit in the abdomen with a baseball bat subsides, he feels a gnawing in his stomach and realizes he hasn’t eaten since— well, since lunch the day before. He has no way of knowing what time it is; everything blurred together as the onslaught continued and without any cues in the windowless hell of the basement he can’t tell if it’s been minutes or hours since he woke up.

He gulps some water down from the bathroom sink— partially to soothe the dryness in his throat, and partially in hopes that the cold of the water will settle his stomach down enough to let him try to sleep.

He returns to his spot in the corner of the basement, closes his eyes, and waits for the cycle of dozing off and screaming awake to begin again.


	8. he acted out (now i can see it is my fault)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "It Took Me By Surprise" by Maria Mena.

Joan leaves and the second that she knows she’s alone, Ellie’s breathing turns almost ragged. She presses her back up against the wall nearest to her and lets herself inch downwards until she’s crouching on the floor with her elbows propped up on her knees and her head in her hands.

  


She takes a minute to let everything sink in and with every passing second that she takes, the feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach grows and expands until it’s encompassing her entire body and weighing her down. And now the images are flashing through her head. All of the terrible things she’s seen happen to people because of or at the hands of atypicals.

  


There’s no doubt that’s what this is. She may have put up a strong defense with Joan, but there really was no way this didn’t have to do with his work at The AM. Owen has nothing else going on in his life and the possibility of this being the work of some stranger is low already, especially considering he was taken from his apartment and not grabbed on the street.

  


And the fact that this  _ is _ likely something to do with atypicals worries her. Whether they want him for information, revenge, leverage, or whatever, they likely have limitless…  _ resources _ at their disposal to ensure they get whatever it is they’re after. They’ll be able to scare him, break him, hurt him, or even  _ kill him _ in some of the most terrifying and painful ways imaginable. She’s desensitized herself to the terrible things she’s seen done to people, but as the images of all those past experiences forcing their way to the front of her mind, this time with Owen in place of the victims, persist, her nausea certainly doesn’t get better, nor does her erratic heartbeat slow down.

  


She’s not going to pretend she was good to Owen. She wasn’t a good boss now, she wasn’t a good coworker before that, and from the beginning she wasn’t a good friend. She couldn’t care less if she was good to him. What mattered was that he and everyone else in the general population was safe from the evils she knew this world contained. So what if in order to protect their safety he had to work some late nights or have his useless ideas shut down? It meant that she was at least in control, and if she was in control then everyone would be safe. She knows how to keep people safe. She knows what she’s doing and Owen never did.

  


She had hoped that maybe someday he’d come around. He’d never be as good as Joan could be and not nearly as good as Ellie is, but he might have still been able to accomplish  _ something _ with a push in the right direction. But before she could make him better, she had to break him down to nothing. 

  


She was hard on him, yes, but she was  _ justified _ . She overworked him, insulted him, and put him in his place at every chance she got because she knows that ever since her promotion he’s been bitter,  _ jealous _ . He needed to be reminded that she is in charge because she’s the only one fit to be in charge, and accepting that will be what protects millions of people and what protects  _ him _ .

  


That’s probably how he got into whatever situation he’s in now. Doing something that goes against everything she’s tried to drill into that thick skull of his.

  


He probably trusted someone he shouldn’t have, took pity on someone he shouldn’t have, pursued an idea he shouldn’t have,  _ made a mistake she wouldn’t have _ . He’s always been way too friendly with the demons they were supposed to be fighting.

  


It’s not her fault. That’s the reminder repeating in her head like a mantra, though with each repetition she feels sick to her stomach, as though it’s her body’s way of pushing back at the lie.

  


It’s not her fault. She did everything she could to protect him, and now because he didn’t listen to her, God knows what might be happening to him.

  


But she can’t let herself think about how he got into this right now. Now she has to figure out how to get him out of it.

  


Taking a deep breath, she stands up. She brushes herself off and she pulls out her phone. Say what you want about Annabelle Wadsworth, you can’t deny that she gets things done. Within a matter of minutes she has confirmation that a team of her best agents is already on their way over, and another is beginning to research possible threats that could be behind this.

  


Owen is a smart man. He never has been and never will be smart  _ enough _ , but despite how moronic so many of his actions are, he does have some modicum of intelligence. That’s about the only thing he has going for him. He’s kind, but that, in her opinion, is not a good quality. He’s selfless. He’ll lie down like a doormat for anyone who displays any dominance whatsoever, he’ll give every bit of his life away to the first stranger that asks. And while that would be the trait of his that serves most to her advantage, it’s still by far his worst.

  


Owen Green is  _ weak _ . He’s awkward, lanky, people-pleasing, and self-conscious. For all the limited potential his intelligence allows her to see in him, he’s still weak, and he doesn’t have the strength, mental or physical, to live through the things she’s envisioning happening to him. So, naturally, she just can’t let those things happen.

  


Owen’s dug himself into a hole. That’s fine. She’ll save him.

  
What is a leader for if not fixing the mistakes of those below her?

  


Because that’s what she is. She’s a leader. She’s smart, she’s in control, and she’s going to get them all through this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wadsworth Is Totally Fine Thanks For Asking


	9. in an isolated system

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "The 2nd Law: Isolated System" by Muse.

Owen expects that the next few days are going to be a lot of the same but… they aren’t. He still doesn’t get sleep— the shock collar makes sure of that, even as he gets more used to sleeping on the floor— but other than that he’s been left alone.

_ Completely  _ alone.

Which, he discovers very quickly, is almost worse than anything else they could do to him.

Because there’s absolutely nothing to do; the basement is empty and silent, the walls and floor are monotonous and hold nothing of interest, and he has nothing but his clothes with him.

There’s nothing to eat either. He hasn’t been given much since he’d been taken. They’d tossed him a few slices of bread after the last day of torture and, despite making best effort to save some of what he’d been given, he’d had it all gone within hours. But now, without the men regularly making their way downstairs to torment him, there’s no one here to feed him either.

That’s what‘s hitting him the hardest, the hunger. The pervasive feeling that’s starting to weigh down on his body more than anything else. He’s still aching all over, his neck irritated by fresh burns and the rest of his body sore and bruised. But the constant pangs of hunger are the hardest thing to distract from.

His life falls into a dull and painful routine very quickly when left on his own. When he wakes up from his several painful attempts at uninterrupted sleep, he gets a drink of water. He stands for minutes in front of the sink, trying to illude himself into believing that maybe if he drinks enough water, he’ll be fine. Maybe if he fills his stomach with enough water, the searing emptiness will finally be satiated. Maybe if he manages to soothe the inconvenient scratchy feeling in his throat only briefly, maybe the pain will never come back. Maybe if he can fix one problem, the others will disappear too.

This is the only way he has to make things better. Despite what little effect it has, he’s going to keep trying it. He’s doing his best to control what he can right now.

After he gives up on that, he starts to pace. He stretches his aching muscles and tries to keep his mind and body at least a little active. He paces and he wonders what the people he knows are doing. He doesn’t have much of a concept of time anymore, but he’s sure someone would have had to notice he was missing by now. If only because he’d had conferences scheduled and patients to meet with. Maybe they’re looking for him.

Maybe they’ve already replaced him.

Maybe Joan is worried about him. Maybe she’s crying over him the same way she cried over Mark to him all those years ago. That one’s more of a hope. It’d be nice for Joan to care that he was missing, but it’s more likely that she’s celebrating his absence than mourning it. The same can be said for Ellie, but she might at least be missing having someone to do her gruntwork, had he not been replaced yet.

His parents would miss him, and he knows that for sure, but that thought brings absolutely no hope whatsoever. He doesn’t want to think about them being worried for him, especially when he knows that nothing can come of that worry. Were Joan and Ellie concerned, they would have resources at their disposal to do something about it. They stand a fighting chance at finding and saving him, should they want to. His parents don’t. They can do nothing besides sit around and worry for him, putting their lives on pause for something that they’ll ever be able to fix.

Every time he reaches this part of the thought process is when he sits down, because every time, he becomes suddenly more aware of how exhausted he is.

He tries to make himself happy. He tries, over the span of however many days he’s left alone, to remember every happy memory he’s ever had, challenging himself to never look back at the same one twice. He remembers the time Joan had stopped by the office with food at two in the morning because he had been up late working on a deadline. He remembers being nine and spending an entire Saturday running around the yard with his childhood dog. He remembers getting hired at the AM. He remembers every fleeting moment of joy he can until he falls asleep.

Then he wakes up to a shock and after a few attempts at sleep to be met with the same result, he repeats the process.

He wakes up to pain, he tries to control it, he makes himself spiral, he tries to make himself calm, he falls asleep, he wakes up to pain.

He continues this on without end until eventually, he can’t.

At some point, he begins drinking less and less water, to the point where he drinks only to briefly assuage his thirst. The longer he goes on like this, exhausted and more defeated by the second, the harder it gets to move. He stops pacing. He sits still on the floor as he has his regularly scheduled emotional crisis, wondering what will happen to his patients without him there to protect them from Ellie, wondering what they’ll tell his family happened to him, wondering a million different things that thinking about too long will bring him nothing but suffering.

He never runs out of dark and painful thoughts to focus on, though eventually, his brain grows too tired and disoriented to recall much more of the good ones. He stops trying to remember them all, instead trying to cling desperately to the ones he can still remember clearly.

He tries to fall asleep thinking good things, but sometimes the last thought before it all fades to black is the question he thinks he might give anything to know.  _ “When are they coming back?” _

There’s a part of him that starts to wonder if anyone ever  _ is _ going to come back down here. Maybe they’ve forgotten about him. Found a new, more useful source of information and let him slip their minds— or maybe just left him down here to rot intentionally.

Maybe they’ve decided that he isn’t going to talk. They’ve deemed him no longer useful, and instead of letting him go or even putting him out of his misery, they’re going to make him learn his lesson the hard way: by wasting away alone in this disgusting windowless basement. By making him spend minutes into hours into days down here unable to think about anything but the inevitability of his own death.

The hunger isn’t the worst part anymore. It’s gotten worse, sure. At any given second it feels like his own stomach is  _ attacking him, _ working against him, and eating away at itself. But the only thing worse than the constant pain is the thought that it might not end. That he’ll spiral downward day by day, that the entropy will only increase until at some point it peters out and takes him with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...entropy can only increase. :)


	10. memories as heavy as a stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Glass Heart Hymn" by Paper Route.

Joan isn’t too proud to admit that she doesn’t have half a clue what Sam is doing on her computer. She’s sat on the right end of the couch, with Joan between her and Mark, typing away at her laptop with a more focused and zeroed-in look than Joan’s ever seen on her before.

She’d been sitting like that for a while now. Long enough for Mark to heat up some food and convince Joan to eat it. Despite the growling of her stomach, it had taken a lot of effort to get her to take the first bite. Just as she had felt so guilty for breaking down, for wasting time crying, she now feels terrible for eating. Something feels so profoundly wrong about the idea of taking care of herself in any way while Owen is stuck God knows where, enduring God knows what. What makes it worse is the knowledge that she’s been eating, and sleeping, and relaxing, and smiling for days now. She’s been going on with her life while he’s been in pain, and now, to do anything besides look for him feels selfish. If she spends time that could be better spent trying her damn hardest to look for him doing trivial things like eating or sleeping, isn’t she essentially assigning her needs a higher priority? 

Owen’s likely scared and miserable and in terrible danger right now, but that doesn’t matter, Joan Bright wants some fucking leftover Thai food.

Owen could be being tortured this very second? That’s terrible, but Joan Bright could probably use a nap.

And the thought process is so familiar too.

_ “No, no I shouldn’t be--” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “Joan--” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “I can’t just sit here and cry, he could be  _ **_dead._ ** _ My brother might be dead right now for all I know, and I’m sitting here drinking tea and crying, like I have any right to be doing anything but looking for him.” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “Joan, I’m sure he’s not--” _

_ “What if he dies, then? What if Mark dies while I’m in here, covered in blankets, hugging my boyfriend, and feeling sorry for myself?” _

The images of that night… well, those  _ nights, _ really, are the first things to play through her head when Mark speaks.

“Joanie, we’re doing all we can right now. Once Sam is done getting the information we need, we can plan what to do from there. In the meantime, you need to take care of yourself. You don’t think you’ll be very good at helping to save him if you’re exhausted and hungry, do you?”

_ “You want to look for him, right? You’ll be better equipped to do that once you let it all out and get some rest. You’re not going to be able to find him if you’re full of bottled up emotions and exhaustion.” _

Mark looks at her confused and concerned when she starts to tear up, but it softens to some form of relief when she finally picks up her fork.

When she finishes eating, she sets her plate down quietly and tries to look over Sam’s shoulder. She feels Mark’s hand grab hers gently, intertwining their fingers without saying anything and Joan feels a bit of her anxiety start to die down. She hadn’t even realized that that nauseous, suffocating feeling had still been there until it had been made better, she’d grown so used to it.

They sit quietly for a while, Joan without the energy to speak and Mark without knowing what to say. Thankfully, though, after several minutes pass, neither of them needs to say anything. They both notice when Sam’s face falls a bit and, slowly, she turns away from the laptop screen to face them. “I looked through the AM’s entire database. The only mentions of Agent Green’s codename, legal name, or AM ID number in reference to tier 5 is just about him working there. Though I’ll admit, some of this  _ is _ making me a bit skeptical about helping him,” she says that last part more under her breath, and Joan ignores the brief pang of guilt and hurt, she’s sure that that comment is warranted.

“I’ve seen how the AM handles things before,” Sam continues. “They’re secretive, obviously, but not to the point of being disorganized. If they were behind this, there would be some record of it.”

“You’re right,” Joan agrees quietly.

“So we know it’s not Wadsworth and the AM, but…”   
  
“...But now we don’t know anything about who it  _ could _ be,” Mark finishes.

And that thought is fucking  _ terrifying. _ They don’t know who took him,  _ where _ they took him, what they’re after, what they’re doing to him, or what they’re capable of. Maybe this is one of those situations where the devil you know is better. Because while Joan knows that getting Owen out of tier 5 with Ellie breathing down her neck would be nearly impossible, she’d at least know what would need to be accomplished there. She has no clue what they’re going up against or what they even need to do to be successful, much less how to go about that.

“I’m sorry, Joan,” Sam breathes quietly, placing a hand on Joan’s arm. “I’ll try to see if there’s anything I can do, anything else I can look for…”

“I-- Thank you, Sam,” Joan clears her throat awkwardly, trying to push back the tears that are starting to well up.  _ No, _ she’s not going to cry again.

“And, well, hey… now we know that Wadsworth really is on our side. I may hate her but she does seem like a… very powerful ally to have.”

“Agreed. The AM has a lot of resources that could be helpful,” she responds, her tone beginning to go back to its normal calm.

“Yeah okay, as long as I don’t have to go near that place  _ or _ Wadsworth,” Mark sighs warningly.

“You won’t,” Joan reassures quickly. She’s about to say more when her phone vibrates from the table. She picks it up and glances down at the screen.

Her nervousness must be visible from her face, because Mark asks, in a mildly concerned tone, “Who is it?”

“Well,” she sighs, “speak of the devil.”   
  
“What does Wadsworth want?” asks Sam from beside her.

Joan takes a deep breath before unlocking her phone and pulling up the message. “Let’s find out.”


	11. your hands go numb and your stomach doubles up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "They Can't If You Don't Let Them" by A Fine Frenzy, but the working title was "Cooked Goose."

The days continue to blend into each other. Owen tries, for a while, to keep track of how many times he’s slept— hopes that maybe he’s still operating on some semblance of a normal day-night cycle— but even that begins to feel useless after about 30 sleeps.

He hasn’t slept for more than what feels like an hour at a time since he was brought here and he can feel the sleeplessness weighing down on his limbs like a ball and chain.

The men don’t leave him alone forever. They come back, and it’s both a blessing and a curse. He hates himself for even remotely considering it a blessing, but some days the pain adds enough variety to his day that it beats the absolute brain-itching, maddening monotony of being left alone.

Most of the time that he  _ isn’t _ being tortured, he spends lying on the hard ground, too exhausted to haul himself up except for the occasional trip to the bathroom. He’d tried, at first, to at least wash himself off with the water from his sink, to rinse his clothing out and maintain  _ some _ of his dignity. But that alone eventually began to feel like too Herculean of a task for such minimal results and he gave up on that endeavor, too.

His clothes hang off of him differently now. People had jokingly described him as a twig before this but he’s almost certain that, were they to see him now, they’d describe him as downright skeletal. He may not have any way to see his own reflection, but he knows he hasn’t been given enough to eat— never often enough and never enough food to actually satisfy him. He’d hoped that maybe mealtimes might be enough to indicate the passage of time, but they seem just as sporadic as everything else.

Wakefulness becomes synonymous with pain and sleep becomes synonymous with nightmares and the most blissful moments he gets are when things get to be too much to bear and he passes out, falling into a black, dreamless unconsciousness.

This, unfortunately, is not one of those moments.

He wakes up naturally this time.

The sensation feels almost foreign to him.

It throws his sense of time off even more— with nothing waking him up on the hour, he has no indication of how long it’s been. But it’s no less jarring than any of the other times he’s woken up, because this time, he is immediately treated to the sight of the larger of the two men staring down at him, holding a blowtorch and a metal rod, with the other man standing behind him holding the ropes.

The panic from the realization of what’s about to happen seizes his chest more than any electricity could ever hope to.

The man laughs. “From the look on your face I can tell you’ve figured out where this is going. Quick mind, you’ve got there. Impressive. Maybe we haven’t broken you enough yet.”

Owen can’t speak— can’t pick enough words from the stream of thoughts racing in his mind to form any coherent sentences.

They’re going to  _ fucking brand him. _

“Y’know, this’ll go easier if you take your shirt off first, but I’m not opposed to burning through the fabric.” The man’s sneer snaps Owen out of the spiral his mind has started to go down and, realizing there is no escaping this, he nods, the anxious hammering in his chest starting to give way to a pervasive numbness that settles deep in his core. He unbuttons the button-down with shaky fingers and slowly, wordlessly, pulls his undershirt over his head.

Belatedly, he realizes that this exposes the top surgery scars on his chest but, well. If either of the two men even notice, they clearly have other priorities in mind, because they make no comment, instead dragging him to the center of the room and shoving him roughly to the ground, face-first, as his hands are tied behind his back.

With his face being held against the ground and no hands to maneuver himself with, he can’t see what’s happening anymore, but he hears the rush of the blowtorch lighting up and he squeezes his eyes shut to brace for the inevitable agony.

“This is all preventable, you know,” the man says, his voice incredibly nonchalant given the circumstances. “Just tell us something. Anything. Give us the information we’ve been asking for and you’ll be allowed to leave here without a fun new permanent scar square in the center of that pretty little back there.”

And, despite himself, Owen briefly considers it. Considers telling them about Damien, or Mark, or Sam. Considers getting out of here.

But instead of giving them anything, he grits his teeth and grounds out, raspy and muffled by the hand shoving him against the ground: “Go to hell.”

The man makes a displeased noise, and Owen can picture him shrugging above him. “Well, alrighty then. Just know that you asked for this.”

Owen immediately wishes he could eat his words from where they fell on the floor beneath him.

The shock collar  _ tickles  _ compared to this.

He’s screaming so hard that it feels like his head might explode, all the blood rushing to his face as it’s pressed down into the floor while the other man digs the hot metal into his spine, directly between his shoulder blades. He can smell his own flesh burning; smell the char and the smoke and the bubble of the thin layer of fat beneath his skin.

He feels nauseous.

He gags, both from the churning in his stomach and the sheer volume of his screams. He’s suddenly almost grateful for the lack of food; nothing comes up when he does. But the force of his heaving only pushes him further against the brand and digs it deeper into his back and the pain gets impossibly worse.

His vision fades to white and his hearing buzzes out into a staticy, high-pitched whine. If he’s still screaming, he has lost all awareness of it.

When he finally comes back to his senses some, it’s to the sound of footsteps receding back up the stairs and a room that now feels freezing fucking cold.

It hadn’t exactly been warm before, but it feels like the burn has spread throughout his body and now anything less than hellfire might as well be the Arctic. He curls in on himself, shaking violently through the aftershocks of being burned, debating whether it’s worth it to endure the pain of fabric on the burn if it means he gets some barrier between him and the chill of the air around him.

His body decides that for him; the moment he tries to move even an inch, the burn pulls so tightly that he nearly blacks out again, and so he doesn’t try again.

He does not move back to the corner.

He does not pull his shirt back on.

He does not walk the short distance to the bathroom to clean the sweat and tears off his face and drink the water from the sink as he has done uncountable times before this.

He lays, in the middle of the basement floor, immobile, borderline-hyperventilating on the shallow breaths he has to take to keep his chest from expanding too much, and wishing not for the first time that he was dead instead.


	12. you don't know who you are until you hate yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Before the Breakdown" from We Are The Tigers.

_ ‘You have Owen’s parents’ number, correct?’ _

Ellie stares down at her phone, waiting for a response to the message she’s just sent. She’s not looking forward to calling Owen’s parents, she really isn’t.

The little bubble that pops up on her screen indicates that Joan is typing. She watches patiently, and prides herself on only feeling a brief surge of frustration when said bubble disappears for a few seconds. Eventually, it reappears, only to disappear again, this time being replaced with a message.

_ ‘Yes, why?’ _

She sighs, annoyed at having to explain herself.

_ ‘Because someone needs to tell them something about what happened and you’re clearly not in any state to.’ _

The reply is almost instant.

_ ‘What are you going to tell them?’ _

She takes a second to formulate the response that she hopes Joan will be happy with. __

_ ‘That we have reason to believe Owen was abducted, but unfortunately the details of the case are confidential, and that they can rest assured we’re working on pursuing possible leads.’ _

Once again, the typing bubble appears and reappears for a few minutes before the new message pops up.

_ ‘And are you working on pursuing possible leads?’ _

Ellie pauses typing after that message and, just as she does, a voice distracts her from her train of thought.

“Director Wadsworth? We couldn’t find anything else that seemed relevant to the… incident. What do you want us to do?” one of the agents she’d called in asks.

“Thank you, Agent Eyre,” she responds before turning to speak to the rest of the room. “I want you all back at the facility. Look through what we’ve found and see if anything leads you anywhere.”

“We haven’t found shit,” she hears a voice murmur so quietly she wouldn’t be surprised if the person next to the speaker hadn’t heard them. But one doesn’t get to be as good a director as Ellie is without being able to pick up on people’s petty, spiteful mumbling.

“What was that, Agent Boleyn?” She says it with an impatient tone that makes the agent’s face go pale.

“Nothing, director.”

“Good. I’m going to stay back for a few minutes, I’ll see you all back at the office.”

She looks back down at her phone as, accompanied by the muffled sound of their own voices, her subordinates leave the room.

“I just don’t see why we all have to stay late to save Green’s sorry ass,” she hears Mustard complain quietly, though barely quiet enough for one to assume he was even trying to hide it. She doesn’t say anything, only makes a mental note to discipline him later for questioning orders.

She takes a deep breath and responds to Joan.

_ ‘We will as soon as we have any leads.’ _

She tries not to get frustrated with Joan as she watches a new message pop up, but the message on the screen is making something angry and irrational boil up to the surface inside her.

_ ‘So I take it that means you haven’t found anything noteworthy.’ _

She wants to text back that she doesn’t see Joan making any big discoveries, that, last she checked, not only was only one of them actively looking for Owen, but only one of them actually had the means and chances of successfully doing so.

It’s the implication that stings. The implication that she  _ should have _ found something. That she’s missed something, done less than she’s supposed to. The implication that she’s already failing at saving her friend.

_ ‘Are you going to give me the number or not?’ _

She’s not failing, is she?

_ ‘Yes, just give me a minute.’ _

She waits a second, and sure enough, another message comes through. When she taps on the message, her phone gives her the option to call the number Joan had sent and it almost disorients her how quickly after clicking that button she hears a ringing begin to play on the other line. She takes a deep breath and holds the phone to her ear. The phone rings only a few times before a voice appears on the other end.

“Hello?” a man’s voice greets her.

“Hello, Mr. Thompson, I need to speak to you and your wife.” She’s not going to beat around the bush.

“What’s this concerning?”

“My name is Ellie Wadsworth, I work with your son.”

“Just a second please,” he responds, and she can hear the nerves in his voice, both as he says that and as, more muffled, as though he’s set the phone down, she hears him call someone else over. There’s a bit more muffled conversation for a minute before another voice joins his at normal volume.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” she says, trying not to sound frustrated at having to repeat herself. “My name is Ellie Wadsworth, I work with Owen.” This phone call has gone on for about a total of thirty seconds and it’s already proving more emotionally taxing than she could have expected. For all the bad things she’s seen and done, she hasn’t experienced that much guilt up until recently, and now, for some reason, she’s feeling a terrible surge of it.

“Do you know where he is? Is everything alright?”

“I— I don’t know where he is, we… we have reason to believe that Owen’s been kidnapped.”

The silence on the other end is nearly painful. Hell, her own words sting. She’s being reminded of that day in Joan’s office. The day she started to learn what it meant to feel doubt.

Because right now her limbs feel heavy, like she can barely bring herself to lift the phone to her ear any longer. Her thoughts feel frantic, not as organized and collected as she usually manages to keep them. And her breathing feels stunted,  _ wrong. _ She feels like she’s drowning, and with every word she speaks, she’s risking a breath that may just fill her lungs with water.

She’s fairly certain now that that’s what doubt is.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes, breaking the silence. “We’re doing everything we can to find him.”

“Do you— Do you have any idea who could have—?” Owen’s mother begins, the distress in her voice audible.

“I… the details of the investigation have to be kept confidential given that his kidnapping was likely related to his work with the government. But I’ve got a team of some of my best agents devoted to finding him.”

Her words barely sound like her own. The tone of her voice is calm and reassuring compared to the absolute storm of thoughts and feelings in her head and the contrast is almost jarring.   
  
“I’m sorry there’s not more I can tell you,” she continues.

“Do you know how long he’s been... gone?” Owen’s father asks hesitantly.

“Since Friday night, after he got home from work.” She waits a second before adding, “I promise we’ll try to keep you updated.”

She doesn’t want to end the conversation so abruptly. She really doesn’t. But she’s given them all of the information she can and she’s sure that they’ll need time to process it on their own. That’s why she wishes them well, tells them that they can contact her should there be any reason to, and says an awkward goodbye. That’s why she hangs up.

That and the fact that the sound of her own voice is making her skin crawl.

She slides her phone into her pocket, grabs her things, and tries to ignore the overwhelming string of thoughts bombarding her as she makes her way to her car. Every concern she’d forced down before the agents had arrived is returning now that she’s alone, now with an added voice in her head telling her that she’s not doing enough. She’s Annabelle Wadsworth, she should already have a full filing cabinet drawer’s worth of evidence and people following at least three different leads.

She opens the door to her car and takes a deep breath as she sits down, raising the keys to the ignition. She stops her arm halfway because that’s when she realizes that her hands are  _ shaking. _ It’s very slight, barely noticeable, but once she catches it she’s unable to stop feeling like every inch of her is shaking.

She sighs upon deciding that she doesn’t entirely trust herself to drive. Still slightly shaking, she pulls her phone back from her pocket and opens up her timer app. This really wasn’t something she had wanted to have to do  _ now, _ but she as much as she hates to admit, her own human emotions are something she’s yet to gain one hundred percent control over.

Five minutes doesn’t feel like a lot, given the circumstance, but she needs to get back to the AM. She doesn’t have time to waste, so the five minutes she takes anyways will have to do. Once she sets the timer and watches it start to slowly tick down, she leans back. She squeezes her eyes shut, and when she opens them, the tears she’s been willing herself not to even think about crying are starting to roll down her cheeks.

Ellie doesn’t cry very often, but when she does it’s as controlled and deliberate as anything else she does. You don’t get to where she’s gotten without learning how to repress. How to bottle things up until it’s convenient to break down.

Then again, she wouldn’t exactly define right now as convenient. She supposes today is just chock-full of failure.

She lets her hesitant cries give way to sobs after a minute or so, burying her face in her hands and trying to clear her mind as she indulges in what is no more than a physical need. She really wishes she didn’t need to cry. Occasionally, she wishes she could live her life without the burden of emotions. It may isolate her, but she’s already isolated herself from the world enough. It may make life less… interesting, but it’s a sacrifice she’s prepared to make.

Her crying spells do usually end this way. Contemplating a life without feelings. This is yet another scenario in which that would prove beneficial. If she weren’t busy mentally dragging herself through hell and back trying to convince herself she was doing enough, then maybe she really  _ would _ be doing enough.

The alarm cuts through her thoughts sharply. The harsh tone and volume a much needed jolt back to reality. She wipes her eyes and turns off the alarm. She sits up straight, she puts the keys in the ignition, and she takes a deep breath.

She pulls out of the parking lot and begins her route back to the AM, her head not much clearer than before.

—

“You wanted to see me, director?” Mustard says, having cracked the door open without knocking. He’s trying to sound nonchalant, but she knows he’s afraid. Ellie prides herself on the fact that at any given moment she can simply  _ assume _ her subordinates are afraid of her and be correct.

“Yes, Agent Mustard. Please have a seat.” She looks up from her computer and shoots him a smile. Not a genuine one of course, one meant to send those already assumed high fear levels rising. “Tell me, agent, what was your assignment today?”   
  
He seems thrown off by the question. Good. “Um, you had us searching Green’s apartment. Looking for anything that could help us figure out, you know, what happened to him.”

“Correct,” she answers, barely leaving any space between his answer and her remark. “So now tell me why it is you think that you can insult me.”

“Wh--What?”

“I gave you an order that I used knowledge and skillset as director to deem a good use of your time. So therefore, would you deciding to question and mock this order not be considered an insult to my judgement?”

He looks like a deer in headlights.

“Answer the question please, agent.”

“I-- I’m sorry, director, it won’t--”   
  
“You didn’t answer me.”

She doesn’t have time to tear apart whatever shocked apology he’s undoubtedly about to try to give again. As Mustard is stumbling over his words, the door opens again suddenly, and Wadsworth looks up to find Agent Eyre leaning against the doorframe, out of breath and urgency written all over her face.

“Director,” she pants, trying to compose herself. “We think we found something.”


	13. you see her when you fall asleep (but never to touch and never to keep)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Let Her Go" by Passenger.

“Mm, breakfast smells good. Did you get up early just to make this?”

Owen feels a pair of warm arms wrap around his torso and a cheek resting on his shoulder, and he smiles, leaning into the touch as best he can while scrambling eggs and flipping the sausages so that they don’t burn.

“Only the best for you,” he says, not turning away from the task at hand but tipping his head back slightly to rest on top of hers for a moment. “You deserve something filling before work. I worry about you when all you ever have for breakfast is granola bars.”

“They’re practical, they’re quick, and they’re portable,” she says, as she does every time, extracting herself from around his waist and instead coming up to stand beside him and lean against his arm. “I’m a busy woman.”

“Maybe so, but you really should eat more, you know.” He flips the scrambled eggs out onto a plate and does the same with the sausages— perfectly timed to finish together.

Joan presses her lips to his cheek and he can feel her smile against his skin.

“Well, if you’re making me all this nice food, then how can I ever say no?”

And then it hits him.

The volt of electricity, that is. Once again, it brings a terrible burning feeling to the skin of his neck. It wakes him from his dreams slowly enough that he can tell it’s about to happen, but so quickly that he doesn’t have time to try and cling to sleep.

For what seems like the thousandth time, he wakes up crying. This time, though, the tears are worse. The realization is setting in that he’s just had the one thing that’s made him happy in this hellhole ripped away from him. The only thought of comfort, the only thought of love, the only thought of  _ Joan _ that wasn’t written over by worry for her. And now, the worry has returned, for himself, for Joan, for Mark, for everyone else these people might be after. The  _ fear _ has returned. The fear that lives with him for every waking moment and even for most of his dreams.

The pain returns too. The aching all over his body from being tied to a chair, from sleeping on the floor, and from being  _ beaten _ relentlessly. The irritating sting of the collar rubbing against the freshly burned skin on his neck. The exhaustion that grips hold of every inch of his body but that he knows will never be satiated. The cold of the stony basement floor that replaces the warmth of Joan’s arms around him.

And with the stark contrast of his dreams, his terrifying reality is now overwhelming him. His brain isn’t just flooded with thoughts of survival as it usually is. For once, he’s not thinking about what  _ has _ happened, what  _ will _ happen, what  _ is _ happening. He’s thinking about what isn’t happening. What can’t.

He can’t sleep. He can’t bathe. He can’t see Joan. He can’t help his patients. He can’t watch the sunrise, or read a book, or laugh at a coworker’s bad joke. He can’t breathe in fresh air, or buy himself a new sweater, or order food from his favorite restaurant.

He can’t do anything anymore. None of the things that make him happy, none of the things that keep him sane, none of the things that he  _ stays alive _ for.

He might never get to again.

He can’t do anything right now except sob himself back to sleep and wish for some sort of end to this.

This time, he doesn’t dream of anything.

He wakes up tied to a chair.

Dimly, he wonders how they managed to manhandle him into the chair without him waking up, but, well. They’ve sedated him before. It’s not out of the question. And besides that, his biggest concern right now is not how he got here, or how he managed to sleep through being moved, or any of those small details.

No, it’s the revolver in the hand of the man standing before him.

“We’re going to play a fun game today,” the man says, as if Owen hasn’t heard that a million times before by now. “See, this gun only has one bullet. It’s a twist on Russian roulette, I guess you could say. Twist is… You don’t get to share. One bullet, one sorry bastard on the receiving end. I’m gonna aim this gun at six different parts of your body. Maybe you’ll end up with a nasty leg injury, or maybe I’ll blow your brains out. I have no clue. You get six chances, so if I were you, I’d do as I were told.”

Owen attempts to swallow back his fear, and as he does he’s only reminded of the dryness of his throat.

“Now,” the man begins smugly, taking a few steps closer and drawing the gun. He cocks it, and points it downwards, levelling it with Owen’s knee. “How about you tell us about the types of abilities you work with?”

Owen tries to push out of his mind the image of his kneecap shattering under the impact of a bullet. He’s gotten good at that. Removing himself from his reality, distracting himself, trying to pretend for as long as possible that whatever is happening to him isn’t real.

He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head.

The man chuckles. The gun clicks.

“Okay, time for round two,” the man says calmly, and when Owen opens his eyes the gun has already moved. The man’s arm has shifted a bit to one side and then up a little, he’s aiming for Owen’s other leg now, a bit above the knee. “Just talk to me a bit, come on. You’d be making things so much easier for both of us.” The man goads him patronizingly.

It would make things so much easier wouldn’t it? He could tell them something, something  _ harmless. _

He could cooperate, he could speed up an inevitable process. Because right now, he’s just playing the waiting game. Trying to last as long as possible before they manage to break him. Why shouldn’t he just give up now?

No. He tries to block out his thoughts, tries to shut down his brain, stop thinking. The temptation to give in is slowly encroaching on him, replacing any thoughts of rebellion he could even hope to have. And with every day that he goes with not enough food, not enough human contact, not enough sleep, he gets weaker. He gets more susceptible.

But he can’t give in yet. Besides, the more effort it takes for them to break him, the more time it gives the others to, if not look for him, then at least prepare themselves. And the longer it takes, the closer he’ll get to the point where his body is unable to take it anymore, where he succumbs completely to something unknown and takes everything there is left to get out of him with him. He’ll either be rescued or make himself miserable until they let him die.

When he doesn’t respond, only sits quietly in thought, the man seems to take that for the act of rebellion it is. The gun clicks again.

“Four left,” the man reminds him as he harshly jabs Owen in the shoulder with the barrel of the gun.

“I’m not telling you anything.” He tries not to let his voice waver, and while he doesn’t, the statement of defiance doesn’t come out nearly as loud as he intends it to. He practically mumbles it, but his voice is clear and steady as he does.

“You really think you’re so brave don’t you?” The man quips. Owen tries to keep from flinching when he pulls the trigger. Thankfully, he’s once again met with a clicking sound and a startling lack of impact.

The man moves the gun. He paces around him and jabs him in the other shoulder with the cold metal. Three left.

A part of him hopes that this is the one with the bullet. The next few attempts they make will likely be much more painful if they’re moving onto the final rounds.

“I’ve been shot before, you know,” the man remarks casually. “It hurts like hell. Funny enough, I was actually shot right here.” He moves the gun a little, hitting it hard against Owen’s shoulder where it was pointed, presumably to indicate where he’d once been shot. “It’s fine with medical attention. If you can get surgery and stitches in a nice hospital, if you can take some time to rest and recover.”

Then, he leans in closer, speaking into Owen’s ear. “It won’t be so easy for you. It won’t all be fine if you’re waiting till the last minute possible to get the bare minimum of medical attention to keep you from fucking dying on us. Won’t be fun if after that you’re still stuck in this shitty basement being tortured every day. No, then it could get infected, it could get reopened. Even if it doesn’t, it’s not like you’ll have anything to help with the pain. Down here, getting shot isn’t just getting shot. You’re gonna keep feeling that bullet till the day you die.”

Owen feels his blood run cold as the man speaks. The feeling of his voice so close to his ear is unnerving on its own, and his words aren’t exactly helping. He’s trying to scare him and it’s working.

He takes a breath. He reminds himself of the inevitable. “Do it.”

“Pardon?” the man asks calmly, despite having heard him perfectly clearly. He’s trying to give him another chance.

“Pull the trigger,” Owen responds, using all of his strength to keep from stammering.

The man clicks his tongue in disappointment and once again, Owen hears the sound of the gun firing absolutely nothing at him.

“Alright then,” the man says, pulling the gun back and starting to walk around Owen once again. This time, he pushes his hand against the small of Owen’s back, causing him to lean forward, his wrists uncomfortably pushing against their restraints. He presses the gun against Owen’s back, right along his spine. “I really can’t imagine any scenario where this one would work out fine, for the record.”

Owen can feel himself start to tremble a little, but at this point sheer stubbornness is prevailing. He’ll cross his fingers and hope for the best, but he can’t give in now.

“I’m not telling you anything,” he repeats, and he’s not too proud to admit that he can feel himself on the verge of tearing up.

The gun clicks. Nothing happens.

He lets out a slow exhale, unsure what feeling is prevailing more, the relief at what he’s avoided, or the fear of what’s to come.

The man moves. Owen slumps back against the chair as soon as he’s able, watching anxiously as the man makes his way around the chair and in front of him.

The gun presses against his forehead.

It’s not as though Owen had never thought about his own death before.

The AM isn’t the safest work environment in the world. He knows that the vast majority of the patients they see aren’t  _ intentionally  _ dangerous, barring a few instances on tier 5 of atypicals who had genuinely used their abilities for hurting people and committing mass murder under the radar, but even so, accidents happen. He’d seen doctors injured by panicking electropaths, he’d seen strong telekinetics with little control accidentally hurt doctors by throwing them across the room, he’d seen pyrokinetics burn agents and bones broken by atypicals with super strength and all manner of incidents.

No deaths. Not yet; not… permanently, anyway. Not in their staff. But somewhere in the back of his mind he’d always been preparing. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d always been prepared for it to be  _ him. _

And he’d decided long ago that, were it necessary to protect someone else, he’d be willing to be the one to step in.

So when the barrel of the gun finally reaches his forehead, cold steel on pale skin, it doesn’t feel any different.

One round.

One shot left.

This was going to be the one. There weren’t any chances left.

“Well, that’s six. Final decision time. You’ll live if you tell me something interesting enough for me to consider it.”

He squares his jaw.

He’s not going to be the one responsible for letting other people get hurt-- not here. Not anymore.

The man shrugs.

“Alright then. Suit yourself.”

The gun clicks.

There’s no gunshot; no pain. For a moment Owen thinks that maybe death came so quickly that he didn’t register any of it, didn’t notice the heat from the gun burning his flesh or the white-out pain of a bullet in his brain or the feeling of the final breath he’d been holding leaving his lungs.

But then awareness comes back. Time speeds up again.

He didn’t feel himself die; what he does feel now is his eyes still squeezed shut, his muscles still tense and his bound hands trembling behind his back and the ache in his legs from being immobile in this wood chair for so long. What he feels is the exhaustion weighing his entire body down and the gnawing in his stomach that he’d been trying to tune out for days now. What he feels is that he is, unfortunately, alive.

The man laughs--  _ genuinely  _ laughs-- at the disappointed slump of his shoulders.

“What, you really thought we were gonna just let you die? Sorry to disappoint, but we still need the info that’s in that little brain of yours. God, you really are broken.”

He chuckles, releases Owen from his restraints, and shakes his head as his footsteps recede back up the stairs again. Owen makes no effort to move-- makes no effort to stand from the chair or rub the rope burn from his wrists or scrub his forehead with his hands to get rid of the lingering sensation of the gunmetal against it.

He instead stares numbly at his shaking hands, lying limp in his lap.

There is no grave to take his secrets to.

And there is no escape from this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The roulette idea is loosely inspired by that one episode of Wolf 359. I fucking love that episode.


	14. there's no meaning to the words (but we still sing these songs well)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from my favorite song, "Be Nice To Me" by The Front Bottoms.

Joan wishes she could feel like she’s making progress. She wishes she could feel like she isn’t letting Owen’s parents down, like she isn’t letting  _ Owen _ down. But she can’t. She can’t feel that way, because after what minimal progress they made in the beginning, the trail ran cold.

TV makes a lot of things seem more glamorous, more  _ important _ , than they really are. She knows this, obviously, she’s known this for most of her life. But she really thought a fingerprint would be damning evidence. A definite clue. Something that would lead them  _ somewhere. _

Turns out, that’s something mainstream crime shows have overhyped and given her way too much faith in. Because in reality, a fingerprint hasn’t meant anything yet. It’d taken the AM a long time to separate the print found at Owen’s apartment from all of the prints he himself had left, and even then, it was smudged and difficult to work with, and it wasn’t as though the AM even had very many people’s fingerprints on file. The fingerprint they’d found was just another piece of useless information for her brain to catalogue and obsess over, even when no possible results could come from it.

She’s had enough. It’s been nearly two months and they’re no closer than they were in the beginning. They still have no idea how to find Owen.

They still don’t even know if he’s alive.

The phone calls have gotten to the point of being regular. Ellie calls her nearly every other day to deliver unsubstantial updates and do poorly disguised check-ins. She wants to find it annoying, the not-so-subtle way Wadsworth tries to hide her relief every time Joan answers the phone, as though she were worried that two months later, whoever took Owen would come back for Joan too. She’s sure she  _ would _ find that concern annoying if it wasn’t borderline fascinating. It’s not often Ellie lets people see her emotional, and it’s even less often that she lets people know she’s  _ worried _ about anything.

There is no phone call today.

No, today there’s a knock at her door.

Sam is over, but thankfully Mark is out shopping. She wishes she could say seeing Ellie standing there is a surprise, but she figured it was only a matter of time before she moved from phone calls to personal check-ins. She’s been sounding on edge in all of her calls and honestly, Joan thinks she gets it.

These past few months have been hell, but whenever she’s needed comfort, when she’s needed familiarity, or a distraction, or to be able to just look at someone she cares about and see and  _ know _ that they’re okay-- she’s had that. She’s had Sam and Mark and all of her other friends.

Ellie has no one. At one point she had had her family, but Joan has no clue whether or not they’re on speaking terms now. And even before all of that went down, God knows she probably hadn’t turned to them for any form of comfort at any point. No, Ellie Wadsworth handles everything on her own. Locks up her emotions and doesn’t let anyone near them.

Joan hates how much she relates to that sentiment.

The difference is, though, that Joan doesn’t let anyone in because she doesn’t want to  _ burden _ anyone with her problems. Ellie, however, seems to have some deep-seated fear of being in any way vulnerable around another person.

“Joan,” Ellie greets her smiling when she opens the door.

“Ellie,” she responds, not meaning to sound as annoyed as she does, though not exactly  _ regretting _ her tone. “What are you doing here, any updates?” She’s not exactly hopeful given the complete lack of progress made so far, but she has to at least ask.

“Well…” the smile leaves her face, but Joan almost feels like that’s a good thing. She looks serious. Like she actually has something worth discussing. Joan steps back a bit, letting Ellie in. She enters calmly, taking a few glances around the apartment. “I’ve been talking to someone. Someone who might know something about the people who did this.”

_ “What? _ Ellie that’s-- that’s big.”

“It might be. We don’t know how much she knows, or even if the groups we’ve had experiences with are the same one. But yes, she might be helpful. Still,” she sighs, “we can’t get our hopes up.”

“Who is she?”

“It’s been difficult agreeing to get her to come work with us, she had some demands she wouldn’t budge on, but she’s finally agreed and is getting settled in. Hopefully within the next few days we’ll be able to get some information from her.”

“Ellie,  _ who is she? _ How does she know who took Owen? More importantly, who took Owen? If you she has experience with the same people then you must know--”   
  
“That’s exactly what I said, Joan. We’ve yet to determine if the group she has insight on is the same--”

“So that means you think it’s a group?”

“It might be a group, it might be  _ this _ group.”

“And what group would that be?!” She barely realizes she’d been gradually raising her volume until she’s practically yelling.

“Joan,” Ellie says, taking a deep breath. “There are a lot of things I can’t tell you yet. Some because they’re confidential and some because  _ I don’t know them.” _

Joan is about to launch into a near  _ tirade _ about the absolutely zero fucks she gives what Ellie deems ‘confidential’ or not, when the conversation is interrupted.

“Joan, is something-- Oh. That explains the yelling.” Sam murmurs the second part almost under her breath. She looks like she’s about to start to say something else, but the other two women are already responding.

“We weren’t yelling,” Joan mutters half-heartedly in defense as Ellie’s response, spoken over hers, drowns her out.

“Hello, Samantha.”

“Wadsworth,” Sam responds, clearly making at least some form of attempt to keep the hostility from her tone. “What are you doing here?”

“I can’t drop by to check in? Not when people are apparently in the business of going around kidnapping my associates?”

She bites back a dozen possible sarcastic remarks, a  _ ‘gee, wonder what that feels like--’ _ dancing on the tip of her tongue. “She has information.” She has to stay on-track. Joan crosses her arms, turning back from Sam to Ellie expectantly.

She’s forgotten that arguing with Ellie required so much strategy. You can’t show emotion, at least, not in the beginning. No, reveal a weak spot too quickly and she’ll deflect anything that comes at her towards it.

“What?”

“I do  _ not _ have information. I have a contact who might.”

“Oh. That could probably be useful, but I think--”

“You’re right, Sam. It  _ could _ be useful. If Ellie weren’t too stubborn and withholding to give us so much as a scrap of information about this ‘contact’--”

“Joan,” Sam starts, seemingly realizing that the yelling she’d commented on earlier is only just getting started. “I don’t think now is the--”

“When is the right time, then? Because I think that for as long as she lets us sit and wait, with  _ nothing _ while she tries to play the hero--”   
  
“We’re not being left with  _ nothing, _ Joan. You know I’ve been searching and  _ trying _ and I think--”

“I’m not playing the hero.” Ellie interrupts before Sam can finish her sentence.

Joan can’t help but laugh at that, the raging fire of anger in her head giving way to something almost numbing.  _ “God, _ Ellie, yes you are! You think you can just leave us all in the dark while you go off and fight the  _ big bad _ on your own. I don’t know if you think you’re protecting us or just keeping us out of your way, but whatever it is, you’re expecting us to just sit here until you and your  _ mystery source _ show up at my doorstep one day with one good-as-new Owen Green, going on about how grateful we should all be, and how clever and resourceful you are.”

Ellie glares at her with a resolve that, were she any less upset than she is now, would have sent chills down her spine. “Maybe I am. At least it’s better than playing the grieving widow, or whatever this is.”

_ “Excuse you?” _

“At least I am doing something, Joan. While you’ve sat around  _ moping--” _

_ “Moping? _ I’ve been  _ coping, _ Ellie! That’s something that those of us who have feelings have to do to prevent us from becoming completely non-functioning members of society. And that isn’t  _ all _ I’ve been doing. I’ve been comforting and staying in contact with his parents, I’ve-- I’ve been going through all his old files and notes looking for clues-- all the ones you’ll let me  _ see _ that is--”   
  
“As I told you before,  _ Dr. Bright, _ much of what I’ve already given you access to is far beyond your security clearance.”

Joan feels a surge of rage in the pit of her stomach at that, taking a step forward as she gears up to respond. She’s been told one too many damn times that she doesn’t have the security clearance for the information that is possibly going to save her... something.

“Oh my God! Will you both please be quiet and listen to what’s going on around you for like, two seconds?” Sam shouts, looking overwhelmed by the mere act of yelling, causing her to read to Joan as more frustrated than angry. Wadsworth opens her mouth to respond, as Joan remains quiet, taken aback by Sam’s outburst. Ellie doesn’t have the opportunity to get a word in, though.

Joan clears her throat, awkwardly, letting the words fully sink in. The thought of an apology crosses her mind, but due to the sudden swell of anxiety in her chest, the matter now seems too urgent for formalities. “What is it?”

Sam takes a deep breath, simmering down from her outburst.

“I  _ found something. _ Something that I think could actually be helpful. Like, really helpful.”


End file.
